16000 foot fall and still living?

[decemberstorm]

So i was testing out ferrams aerodynamics mod( great mod btw ) and well my plane disintegrated( doing a split-s on 4x speed is a bad idea), anyways i bailed out and at 5km and some how survived. Did kerbals get some super human buffs last patch?, or was this just a freak coincidence.

[spikeyhat09]

In 0.17 they got new suits, which are lined with kevlar and carbon nanotubes. also, there is a new layer of industrial-strength jello inside.

[maple51]

So i was testing out ferrams aerodynamics mod( great mod btw ) and well my plane disintegrated( doing a split-s on 4x speed is a bad idea), anyways i bailed out and at 5km and some how survived. Did kerbals get some super human buffs last patch?, or was this just a freak coincidence.

Was it Jeb?

[henryrasia]

Yeah I showed my friend the other day that you couldn't "have some fresh air" while flying in atmo. Some random kerbal fell from 11 km and survived. I was like: nonono, he was dupposed to poof and die, I swear it!

[Qumefox]

You can likely jetpack, even on kerbin, enough to slow a kerbal down to the point of not going poof. They really are fairly sturdy critters.

[theflyingfish]

Kill velocity for a Kerbal is around 50 m/s. Terminal velocity much faster than that. And no, the EVA pack won't help you.

The freak survival instances are most likely just that, glitches in the game engine caused by the space Kraken that let the Kerbal live on. (Altars are being built at this moment for the worship of the Generous Space Kraken.)

Fall glitches like these are fairly common, I would guess that they occur ~3% of the time. I once had Bob hit the munar surface at around 40 m/s, and rather than entering ragdoll mode he bounced right back up, with perfect conservation of momentum.

[Qumefox]

I once had Bob hit the munar surface at around 40 m/s, and rather than entering ragdoll mode he bounced right back up, with perfect conservation of momentum.

Maybe Bob was just wearing his rubber underwear that day.

[TheHengeProphet]

I've seen the 'Kerman Bounce' phenomenon far too often, when using my Kermannons (or Kerbolaunchers, whichever you prefer) to vouch for a ~3% occurrance rate. I would say it happens much closer to 30% of the time. Not sure what causes it, but I'm quite sure that Kerbals don't register physics properly, as I've never had a "tragic" EVA occurrance (or any, for that matter) that registered over 1g of force at any given time.

[LegitBro]

so, space kraken destroys our interplanetary ships but save our kerbals on kerbin? Looks like its trying to tell us not to venture into space...

[Whatshtisthis]

so, space kraken destroys our interplanetary ships but save our kerbals on kerbin? Looks like its trying to tell us not to venture into space...

So, the Kraken is not a monster, but a misunderstood silent guardian?

[Grand Lander]

It must of been Jeb again!

[azazel1024]

Yeah, I had one of my Kerbals bounce the other day. He stepped out of his space station that didn't quite make orbit (80km apogee on that launch).

He hit with something like 100m/sec of velocity still and BOUNCED (about 600m high). He did not survive landing the bounce though.